Winning hearts and minds

Sobeys Inc. puts customer focus first with SAS® for grocery analytics

For a national grocer operating in such a geographically and ethnically diverse country as Canada, taking a local neighborhood approach to providing the right products, to the right customers, in the right place is a sure way to win hearts and minds – and gain a competitive advantage over big-box stores that are slowly eating into the market share of traditional grocery retailers.

"Customer insight and intimacy is one of Sobeys' strategic pillars," says Clinton Keay, CFO. "With SAS Analytics we can understand who our key customers are, as well as understand the different types of customer we have by individual market."

Our goal is to be widely recognized as the best food retailer in Canada. In order to achieve that, we need strategic partners to support us in that goal. SAS is one of those strategic partners, providing our users with the tools to do their jobs well.

Clinton Keay
CFO

"We're a locally driven organization, with resources dedicated to providing customer service that is tailored to the markets they serve. Unless you can get it down to the operations of the individual store level, it's not going to add any value."

"We can help each store use information to create customer intimacy through one-to-one contact," adds Dave Eddy, Director of Decision Support Systems. "Customer insight allows Sobeys to recognize loyal shoppers , and helps us provide better offerings to our customers so that they're happy with their shopping experience".

Unique approach to the market

This customer-focused strategy has served Sobeys well since its inception a century ago in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. In the last 25 years alone, this leading Canadian grocer has expanded its presence outside of Atlantic Canada to become a CAD $15.8 billion national brand.

To increase its level of customer service, satisfaction and profitability, the grocer is also using analytics to analyze customer data derived from its loyalty card programs.

“One thing we use SAS for is to generate the insight that informs better one-to-one communications,” explains Eddy. We’re tailoring offers directly to shoppers based on their purchase history, which has increased the effectiveness of communications sent out by the marketing department.”

Integrated retail analytics

Along with Sobeys' phenomenal growth over the years came a vast amount of customer and business data, which the grocer needed to harness together to support a variety of analytical applications, such as customer insight, pricing and promotion optimization, and merchandise intelligence.

"We can now manage data in one location for more consistency, which supports better decisions at the store level," says Keay. "In retail, there are a number of areas you have to focus on, such as merchandising, the supply chain and store operations. You need to look at everything holistically, so having all the data available to make the decisions that will improve customer focus is key; customer first and then you can succeed."

Strategic analytics partner

According to Keay, taking an integrated approach, with a strategically aligned software partner, is critical to successfully building a retail analytics foundation.

"We were looking for a strategic business analytics partner that could provide us with an integrated suite of tools to manage and analyze data from multiple sources, such as our merchandising, point of sales and logistics systems," explains Keay. "We have to make sure the pricing and promotion optimization engines are linked with our customer insight foundation. SAS is the integrator that helps pull this all together. So rather than just looking at the science of pricing in isolation, we can make more informed pricing decisions for our customers in the markets we serve.

"Our goal is to be widely recognized as the best food retailer in Canada," Keay concludes. "In order to achieve that, we need strategic partners to support us in that goal. SAS is one of those key strategic partners, providing our users with the tools to do their jobs well."

Challenge

Put its customers first and use advanced retail analytics and data integration to gain customer insight, continue building customer relationships and loyalty, and drive results.

Solution

Benefits

Sobeys has a complete view of its business and customer data, allowing the grocer to use analytics to offer the right products, in the right stores, for each individual market it serves, as well as target loyal customers with one-to-one communications.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.